Sign in/Register
Looking for the Professionals/Advertiser Login?
By Signing up you are agreeing with our Terms and Privacy Policy.Forgot your password?
Feedback is welcome
A DONATION of 15 million vaccines and €50 million will be made via the World Health Organisation (WHO)'s COVAX programme, a community initiative seeking help from the planet's richest nations to guarantee immunisation for developing countries, according to Spain's president Pedro Sánchez.
This is in addition to the 7.5 million vaccines Spain has already promised Latin America.
During the virtual 'Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment' summit on vaccination and the fight against the pandemic, Sánchez stressed that 'only through solidarity can we overcome the crisis'.
He said Spain has so far contributed around €180m to the international aid programme to help stop Covid-19 in the developing and third world.
Reiterating that the first world would only be safe when the third world also was, and that 'none of us are safe until all of us are', the national leader says Spain 'firmly supports' the European Union's mechanisms for sharing vaccines with countries which do not have the funds to order in enough doses for their entire population.
He is also in favour of 'more flexible' approaches to vaccine patents, since these – according to Doctors Without Borders, which is campaigning hard for them to be scrapped – would prevent their universal access worldwide.
Sánchez called for patents to be 'relaxed' in order to 'increase and improve manufacturing and distribution'.
Spain's National Research Council (CSIC), which most of the top scientists based in the country
belong to or have links with, also backs the WHO's initiative of an 'open licence' for creating new diagnostic tests.
At the moment, the price of PCRs is prohibitive for less well-off countries, meaning the contact tracing and testing systems in place in the richer nations – which have been key to preventing an even worse catastrophe and heightened mortality rate – are beyond the possibilities of most of the planet.
It is not clear which brand of vaccines Spain will donate, or whether its contribution will include a mixture of all of those in current use.
VARIOUS charities and organisations – local and national – have set up channels for members of the public to help those affected by the storms and flash floods in the province of Valencia.
A HOLLYWOOD legend joining folk-dancers from Asturias and showing off her fancy footwork in the street is not a scene your average Oviedo resident witnesses during his or her weekly shop. Even though their northern...
WINNING a Nobel Prize might be the highest form of prestige on earth and the ultimate goal of every artist, scientist or public figurehead – but the next best thing has to be earning Spain's national version, a...
A MÁLAGA woman has just scaled nearly 6,000 metres to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for meningitis research – and handed over a healthy sum to help scientists in their mission to wipe out the condition...